[VIDEO] Doah Fest comes back with big-name line-up

Wednesday, Jul. 30
| By
Hannah Dellinger

RDGLDGRN Will be headlining Doah Fest this year. The band is known for their hit song "I Love Lamp." The band gained popularity after releasing an album with Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters on the drums.Courtesy Photo

The dark electronic funk band Tauk will be playing on Saturday night at Doah Fest. Their live performances are always a crowd pleaser. Courtesy Photo

Just south of Fauquier, in Luray, some of the freshest bands in the local music scene will be jamming out at a three-day music and art festival.

Doah Fest is coming back for it’s second year and this time around they’re bringing out some top-notch talent to headline the event. Tremendous talent including Tauk, Proverbial, The Good Thing and local favorites and Northern Virginia natives RDGLDGRN (pronounced red gold green) will headline with a ton of other artists playing through out the weekend.

One of Doah Fest’s founders, Ivan Carpio, said that last year’s festival was a dream that came true at the last minute.

“We always talked about putting on a festival,” he said. “In a drunken conversation last year in April, we starting thinking that this might be worth a shot. We ended up putting it together in three months.”

Carpio and his friends Josh Turner, Eduardo Lopez and “Mean Uncle” Keith (who wishes to only be identified as such) had access to more than 300 acres of family farm land right on the Shanendoah.

For the avid festival goers, having that much land at their disposal it seemed like having a festival would be a no-brainer.

The group was able to put together a lineup of local bands including Nicky C & the Rattle Snake Bites, The Right Track, Shag, and Devil Die Laughing.

They hoped that enough people would show up to the festival to be able to pay the bands and break even.

“Last year there came a point where we had sold most of the tickets and we felt a big relief,” said Carpio. “Sure enough it shot through the roof. We weren’t expecting people that we didn’t know to come, but we didn’t know most of those people that ended up coming.”

Carpio said that 400 people showed up and the weekend was a huge success.

“This year will be even better,” he predicts. “We’ve had a full year to put it together and we’ve learned from our successes and failures from last year. We have a really big bands coming out this year and we expect a lot more people.”

Carpio and his friends have taken their collective experiences from going to other music festivals all over the country and incorporated the positive aspects of big festivals like Bonaroo in a smaller setting.

“We want to bring the diversity of the workshops and artists of the bigger festivals and bring that kind of stuff to a festival that is a reasonable price to get into,” said Carpio. “We also want to try to fix problems that other festivals have.”

For example, some festivals don’t have areas with enough shade or water to swim in to cool off in the smoldering summer heat. Carpio said that for this reason, there will be a “river set” in which a stage will be set up facing the river during the hottest part of the day so that people in the water can still hear the music.

This year Doah Fest is expanding from three stages to four, with 15 musical artists performing over the three-day period.

This year there will also be what is known as a “silent disco,” which involves a crowd of people wearing headphones and dancing to different kinds of music at the same time.

Doah Fest’s silent disco will have a little twist. Concertgoers will be given special headphones that pick up the music that two separate DJs are generating at opposite ends of the dance floor. The headphones will have a button on them that allows listeners to switch back and forth as they wish.

There will also be a plethora of live art installations. There will be artists creating as the music plays, a graffiti wall t and tons of tunnels and structures.

“Our artistic concept for this year’s festival is the fusion of the Native American mythology and the natural history of the Shenandoah,” said Carpio.

On top of music and art, there will be yoga workshops, late night bonfire jam sessions, vendors, food stands and a general store.

Carpio says that they are expecting anywhere between 800 and 1,200 people to show up.
For more information, visit to doahfest.com.

For more information, or to purchse tickets, visit http://doahfest.com/. Use the code "fauquier" to get a 10 percent discount on your tickets.

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